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Bah, the patent system as a whole is broken anyway. There are very few patents whose absence would have slowed down innovation. On the contrary, the presence

Bah, the patent system as a whole is broken anyway. There are very few patents whose absence would have slowed down innovation. On the contrary, the presence of patents tend to slow down innovation. You want more innovation? Abolishing patents altogether is probably best. It won't "save the inventor", but it will certainly save the invention.

Animats 11y ago
Without patents, companies use trade secrets more. That's worse. Then you never find out how they do it. Note how secretive Google and Apple have become. For a while, things could be reverse-engineered. That's getting harder; if important parts are in the cloud, you have no access to how they work and no right to reverse engineer. (More) Business method patents are pretty much gone, after the last revision of patent law. Uber can't patent their version of a taxi service. There are still old business method patents, but nobody is winning infringement cases with them. There was a more narrowly focused bill intended to prevent sending out demand letters in bulk. Not sure what happened to that one.
- dave_sullivan 11y ago
  Google is not all that secretive; they publish a lot of their most interesting research (you do have to be a subject matter expert to fill in the blanks, but they give you a lot to work with). Apple is very secretive, but they are more and more in the minority and I don't think this policy of theirs has anything to do with patents (more like controlling the entire product marketing and PR process as much as possible). The idea of the lone genius inventor is no longer true (if it ever was) and needs to go away. These days, these are often the people doing the worst science--the ones with some algorithm that no one else has thought of. Big technological shifts are the result of millions and millions of tiny little innovations, none of them in themselves worthy of monopoly guarantees. I think innovation would actually increase if the entire patent system simply did not exist (but I admit this is a very extreme stance and therefore would be more in favor of making patents easier to invalidate via a public peer review jury kind of thing. Patent office needs help and volunteer experts could lend a hand, particularly with the internet and better search tools to uncover overly broad patents and prior art automatically.) If you've got a great product and can't figure out how to make money off of it without patents, it's not a great product.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    > The idea of the lone genius inventor is no longer true The age of the lone genius has long since passed.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Note how secretive Google and Apple have become. If they're secretive despite having patents (and not having this law), how is that an argument against weakening them?
- woah 11y ago
  This is dumb. Who cares if they have trade secrets? I can invent things myself. The concept of ideas being scarce is something believed only by professional talkers who have never created anything. What's truly evil is if I invent something and then I am robbed by a corporation who was able to spend millions to push some over-broad patent through the system. Nobody here believes you when you pretend that innovation is scarce.
throwawaykf05 11y ago
> On the contrary, the presence of patents tend to slow down innovation. I believe we may have had this exchange before, but they is no empirical evidence of that. At most there have been apocryphal examples that have mostly been debunked. There are a ton of empirical studies showing the benefits (increased r&d spending, vc investments, etc.) and costs (potential for patent holdup, thickets, etc) of patent systems, but nobody has ever been able to show that innovation itself is harmed or spurred. I'd guess this is mainly because it is almost impossible to define "innovation" precisely enough to measure it.
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  Extremely short argument: I have read Against Intellectual Monopoly, and found the arguments compelling (I trust there were no major factual inaccuracy). http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
  - wstrange 11y ago
    Just want to second this book recommendation. They cite examples of industries that have prospered without patent protection. Outside of pharma, the pro-patent position seems quite weak. And even for pharma there may be better models (lotteries, bounties for drugs, public funding)
  - throwawaykf05 11y ago
    I guessed that would come up :-) Unfortunately, that book contains many fabrications and mischaracterizations of other work, which calls into question anything they say. A previous comment pointing this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7889290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7889290 Another example of similar shenanigans from the same authors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157206
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- kelnos 11y ago
incepted 11y ago
> Bah, the patent system as a whole is broken anyway. There are very few patents whose absence would have slowed down innovation. On the contrary, the presence of patents tend to slow down innovation. There is very little evidence of that. Also, for using a system that's allegedly broken, the US is the country that has been the most innovative in terms of software for decades in a row now.
- kelnos 11y ago
  Also, for using a system that's allegedly broken, the US is the country that has been the most innovative in terms of software for decades in a row now. I'd say that's despite our patent system, not because of it. I suspect we could be even more innovative -- and indeed, recover some of the edge we've lost in recent years -- by at least killing software and business-method patents... and frankly I wouldn't be opposed to throwing out the entirety of the US patent system. (Which is of course impossible, even if there was US political will to do so, given foreign treaties and obligations in that area.)
  - incepted 11y ago
    You're making a tough claim here. You're not just saying that the system can be improved (which is kind of self evident and applicable to pretty much everything) but you're saying that software patents are holding back innovation. How would you go about proving that? I prefer to stick to a more reasonable claim: the system is not broken, it has a few flaws, such as those that enable the existence of non-practicing entities. Fix that flaw and everyone will finally realize that the concept of software patents is sound. We just need to improve its current implementation.
    - monochromatic 11y ago
      How would we get rid of non-practicing entities? Forbid patent assignments?
      - incepted 11y ago

Animats 11y ago

Without patents, companies use trade secrets more. That's worse. Then you never find out how they do it. Note how secretive Google and Apple have become. For a while, things could be reverse-engineered. That's getting harder; if important parts are in the cloud, you have no access to how they work and no right to reverse engineer. (More) Business method patents are pretty much gone, after the last revision of patent law. Uber can't patent their version of a taxi service. There are still old business method patents, but nobody is winning infringement cases with them. There was a more narrowly focused bill intended to prevent sending out demand letters in bulk. Not sure what happened to that one.

dave_sullivan 11y ago
Google is not all that secretive; they publish a lot of their most interesting research (you do have to be a subject matter expert to fill in the blanks, but they give you a lot to work with). Apple is very secretive, but they are more and more in the minority and I don't think this policy of theirs has anything to do with patents (more like controlling the entire product marketing and PR process as much as possible). The idea of the lone genius inventor is no longer true (if it ever was) and needs to go away. These days, these are often the people doing the worst science--the ones with some algorithm that no one else has thought of. Big technological shifts are the result of millions and millions of tiny little innovations, none of them in themselves worthy of monopoly guarantees. I think innovation would actually increase if the entire patent system simply did not exist (but I admit this is a very extreme stance and therefore would be more in favor of making patents easier to invalidate via a public peer review jury kind of thing. Patent office needs help and volunteer experts could lend a hand, particularly with the internet and better search tools to uncover overly broad patents and prior art automatically.) If you've got a great product and can't figure out how to make money off of it without patents, it's not a great product.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > The idea of the lone genius inventor is no longer true The age of the lone genius has long since passed.
icebraining 11y ago
Note how secretive Google and Apple have become. If they're secretive despite having patents (and not having this law), how is that an argument against weakening them?
woah 11y ago
This is dumb. Who cares if they have trade secrets? I can invent things myself. The concept of ideas being scarce is something believed only by professional talkers who have never created anything. What's truly evil is if I invent something and then I am robbed by a corporation who was able to spend millions to push some over-broad patent through the system. Nobody here believes you when you pretend that innovation is scarce.

throwawaykf05 11y ago

> On the contrary, the presence of patents tend to slow down innovation. I believe we may have had this exchange before, but they is no empirical evidence of that. At most there have been apocryphal examples that have mostly been debunked. There are a ton of empirical studies showing the benefits (increased r&d spending, vc investments, etc.) and costs (potential for patent holdup, thickets, etc) of patent systems, but nobody has ever been able to show that innovation itself is harmed or spurred. I'd guess this is mainly because it is almost impossible to define "innovation" precisely enough to measure it.

loup-vaillant 11y ago
Extremely short argument: I have read Against Intellectual Monopoly, and found the arguments compelling (I trust there were no major factual inaccuracy). http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
- wstrange 11y ago
  Just want to second this book recommendation. They cite examples of industries that have prospered without patent protection. Outside of pharma, the pro-patent position seems quite weak. And even for pharma there may be better models (lotteries, bounties for drugs, public funding)
- throwawaykf05 11y ago
  I guessed that would come up :-) Unfortunately, that book contains many fabrications and mischaracterizations of other work, which calls into question anything they say. A previous comment pointing this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7889290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7889290 Another example of similar shenanigans from the same authors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157206
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kelnos 11y ago

incepted 11y ago

> Bah, the patent system as a whole is broken anyway. There are very few patents whose absence would have slowed down innovation. On the contrary, the presence of patents tend to slow down innovation. There is very little evidence of that. Also, for using a system that's allegedly broken, the US is the country that has been the most innovative in terms of software for decades in a row now.

kelnos 11y ago
Also, for using a system that's allegedly broken, the US is the country that has been the most innovative in terms of software for decades in a row now. I'd say that's despite our patent system, not because of it. I suspect we could be even more innovative -- and indeed, recover some of the edge we've lost in recent years -- by at least killing software and business-method patents... and frankly I wouldn't be opposed to throwing out the entirety of the US patent system. (Which is of course impossible, even if there was US political will to do so, given foreign treaties and obligations in that area.)
- incepted 11y ago
  You're making a tough claim here. You're not just saying that the system can be improved (which is kind of self evident and applicable to pretty much everything) but you're saying that software patents are holding back innovation. How would you go about proving that? I prefer to stick to a more reasonable claim: the system is not broken, it has a few flaws, such as those that enable the existence of non-practicing entities. Fix that flaw and everyone will finally realize that the concept of software patents is sound. We just need to improve its current implementation.
  - monochromatic 11y ago
    How would we get rid of non-practicing entities? Forbid patent assignments?
    - incepted 11y ago